Increasingly consumers are conducting financial transactions through Self-Service Terminals (SSTs) without the assistance of a clerk. In fact, in many cases these transactions are conducted without any store staff in the vicinity of the SSTs.
For the most part, Self-Service (SS) transactions have been effectively inaccessible to the visually and hearing impaired. Typically, SSTs deploy a braille engraved keypads in addition to touchscreen options in order to assist the visually impaired in conducting a SS transaction. The hearing impaired largely relay on visual options when conducting SS transactions, but in some cases a headphone jack is available for the hearing impaired to insert headphones to receive directed sound at a higher volume. Both options available to the hearing and visually impaired are not optimal and require more time and effort to complete a SS transaction.
In addition, often (particularly at a grocery SS checkout) a customer may have a large amount of items and is visually focused on handling the items from the cart through the scanner and into his/her bag. The customer relies on hearing the sound indicating that the scanner properly scanned the items and infrequently looks at the monitor to confirm the item was properly scanned. This simple task is not so simply for the hearing impaired because the audible ping from the scanner is inaudible to the hearing impaired. So, the hearing impaired has to visually focus on the monitor during the SS transaction, which can significantly slow down the transaction and for a large amount of items being processed, may deter the hearing impaired from even attempting a SS grocery checkout.
In fact, in noisy environments even customers without handicaps may be unable to detect the confirmation pings from a SS grocery checkout, which can impact the queue lines and transaction throughputs during high traffic periods at the grocery store.